Marcus Klingberg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Abraham Marcus Klingberg (Hebrew: אברהם מרקוס קלינגברג‎; born in Poland in 1918) is the highest ranking Soviet spy ever caught in Israel. The case of Klingberg is regarded one of the most destructive spy scandals in the history of the State of Israel.

At the beginning of World War II, fearing the Nazis, Klingberg escaped from Poland to the USSR. There, he finished his medical studies . On the first day of the German invasion to USSR (22.6.1941) he volunteered for the Red Army where he served as a medical officer.

In 1948 he immigrated to Israel. He served in the Medical Corps of the Israel Defense Forces, and in 1950 he advanced to the rank of Lt.Colonel. In 1957 he joined the top-secret Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) in Ness Ziona (south of Tel Aviv), where he served as Deputy Scientific Director (until 1972). He also served as Head of the Department of Epidemiology until 1978. Klingberg was Professor of Epidemiology and Head of the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine in the Medical Faculty of Tel-Aviv University from 1978 to 1983. He was President of the European Teratology Society (1980-1982) and President of the International Steering Committee for the Seveso Disaster (Italy) from 1976 to 1984.

Klingberg contacted the USSR for the first time in 1957, and soon after that he started his espionage activity. Israel's foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, Mossad and Shin Bet, began to suspect Klingberg of espionage, but shadowing brought no results. At one point, the scientist also successfully passed a lie detector test.

In January 1983 Shin Bet officers informed Klingberg they wanted to send him to Singapore where a chemical plant blew up. After leaving home with his suitcase, he was taken not to the airport but to an apartment in some undisclosed location where he was interrogated. After ten days, Klingberg confessed, describing his relations with the USSR in detail. He claimed he was not paid for the information he provided and had collaborated with the Soviet union for ideological reasons. He was found guilty of passing secrets to the Soviet Union and sentenced to 20 years in prison, of which he served 15. He spent the last five years under house arrest.^[1] Details of his arrest and conviction were kept secret for a decade.

In 1989, Israeli attorney Amnon Zichroni, representing the state, worked out a deal in which East Germany and the Soviet Union would exchange Klingberg for Ron Arad, an Israeli fighter pilot believed to be captured in Lebanon. The deal fell through.

During the Jonathan Pollard investigation, a Soviet defector in US hands revealed that in addition to the two Soviet spies serving prison terms in Israel (Kalmanovitch and Klingberg), there was a third who had not been caught. He was well placed in the Defense Ministry, and still "active."

In 1997, Amnesty International appealed to the Israeli government to release Klingberg on medical grounds or transfer him to a less stressful environment. Because of his failing health (he suffered from several CVA's), he was released to house arrest in 1998. A camera was installed in his apartment, which was hooked up to the offices of MALMAB (Ministry of Defense Security Authority) at the Kirya, Tel Aviv. His telephones were wiretapped, with his knowledge. Special guards who were working for the MALMAB were assigned to him, and Klingberg had to pay their salaries. Klingberg also signed a commitment not to speak about his work.

After his release in 2003 he left for Paris to live near his daughter Sylvia and grandson, Jan Brosset.^[2]. Klingberg's former son-in-law, Ehud Adiv, was also convicted of espionage.

Klingberg published his memoirs, Hameragel Ha'akharon ("The Last Spy"), written together with his lawyer, Michael Sfard in 2007.